Every so often I determine there isn't enough suffering in my life so I decide to read the source material for whatever pop psychology term my patients have latched on to from TikTok or YouTube or whatever.
I have lately been hearing a lot about "highly sensitive people/children" so I borrowed Elaine Aron's (child psychologist) book The Highly Sensitive Child from the library. I'm only into chapter one and I don't think I can keep going.
She has stated both that this "trait" is both categorical based on a study done for a graduate thesis and absolutely not continuous. Then later she states it may in fact be continuous. This is on the span of a few pages.
The questionnaire is perhaps the best example of Barnum effect I've ever seen. You need only one positive item out 23 of to qualify as Highly Sensitive and some items include children who "asks lots of questions" "notices the distress of others" so most children. She says highly sensitive can be manifested in children who are any range of opposites such as loud or quiet, introverted or extroverted, externalizing or internalizing.
She says ADHD is over diagnosed for the money schools get for diagnoses. The whole thing has an anti scientific flavor.
But perhaps I'm not to the good part yet or maybe the adult books are better. It's been a minute since I took personality theory so is there any legitimate recognition or merit to this label? My hunch is it's basically a way for people to either feel special for normal variations in personality or put a positive twist on their/their child's ADHD/Autism/sensory integration problems but this is not my area of expertise .
I have lately been hearing a lot about "highly sensitive people/children" so I borrowed Elaine Aron's (child psychologist) book The Highly Sensitive Child from the library. I'm only into chapter one and I don't think I can keep going.
She has stated both that this "trait" is both categorical based on a study done for a graduate thesis and absolutely not continuous. Then later she states it may in fact be continuous. This is on the span of a few pages.
The questionnaire is perhaps the best example of Barnum effect I've ever seen. You need only one positive item out 23 of to qualify as Highly Sensitive and some items include children who "asks lots of questions" "notices the distress of others" so most children. She says highly sensitive can be manifested in children who are any range of opposites such as loud or quiet, introverted or extroverted, externalizing or internalizing.
She says ADHD is over diagnosed for the money schools get for diagnoses. The whole thing has an anti scientific flavor.
But perhaps I'm not to the good part yet or maybe the adult books are better. It's been a minute since I took personality theory so is there any legitimate recognition or merit to this label? My hunch is it's basically a way for people to either feel special for normal variations in personality or put a positive twist on their/their child's ADHD/Autism/sensory integration problems but this is not my area of expertise .
